Colonialism as a continuing project: The portuguese experience

The end of the American Civil War began a lengthy period of Southern inferiority vis-?-vis the North-a period so lengthy that some Southerners argue that it lasts to this day. Not until Woodrow Wilson's election in 1913 did the United States have a Southern-born president after the Civil War. Southerners sought novel means to assert some degree of superiority over their Northern neighbors. College football became a primary means of reasserting a Southern sense of identity and superiority. In inter-regional games in the 1920s and 1930s, the martial spirit of college football allowed Southerners to reassert their sense of honor, which had been maligned since defeat in the Civil War. As Bertram Wyatt-Brown (1982) has shown, the concept of honor defined Southern males' outlook; secession from the Union and civil war occurred when Southerners perceived Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency as the culmination of anti-slavery assaults upon their honor. Such racial definitions of Southern identity became problematic as the civil rights movement gained impetus in the 1950s and 1960s. To remain competitive with teams from other regions, Southern football teams began to recruit black players; The University of Alabama fielded its first black football player in 1971. However, transition from segregation to inclusion has not been easy. Symbols of white Southern pride highlight lingering racial difficulties, as a 1997 controversy over use of the "Rebels" nickname and fans' waving of the Confederate battle flag at The University of Mississippi illustrates. Controversies like this raise troubling questions about Southern identity, namely "Whose South is it?" and "Can expressions of Southern nationalist feelings possibly escape racial implications?"     

Bird in hand: How experience makes nature

It is almost a truism that nature is social, but by what means is nature made social at the level of the interactional encounter? While the transformation of society/nature relationships is often approached through the problematic of distance, and at the scale of macro-historical transformation, this article uses a conflict between American birdwatchers and ornithologists over scientific “collecting” (literally, the killing of birds) to examine the processes through which individuals come to know nature, and come to know it so differently. With John Dewey’s (1958 [1925]) “experience” as the unit of analysis, I trace changes in each group’s experience with birds over the past century; the phenomenology of the resulting encounters; and the understanding that emerges from each in order to understand (1) how, empirically, these two very different loves of birds are formed, and (2) knowledge of nature as an affective sensibility shaped by experiences of closeness.     

Iraq,Afghanistan, and rethinking the post-heroic turn: Military decorations as indicators of change in warfare

This article compares the awarding patterns of the two senior Anglophone military decorations, the British/Commonwealth Victoria Cross and the American Medal of Honor, to challenge arguments that a shift to ‘post-heroic’ warfare has been in progress in Western societies since 1990. Despite the two decorations being independent of each other, each born of a particular military, political, and social context in their respective parent societies, the article reveals strong consistencies across the two. These include common understandings of military heroism centred on infantry- rather than machine-intensive combat, and a shared neglect of armoured, aerial, and naval combatants. Crucially, the medal data suggests that, despite academic suggestions to the contrary, there was no discernible shift towards ‘post-heroism’ in the post-Cold War era. Such a shift, however, is observable between 1916 and 1920, suggesting that the ‘new Western way of war’ began far earlier than is often suggested.     

Slaveholders and revolution: the Jamaican planter class,British imperial politics,and the ending of the slave trade, 1775–1807

This article re-examines the declining influence of Jamaican sugar planters within the British Empire during the period between the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 and Parliament’s decision to abolish the slave trade in 1807. Much of the existing scholarship emphasises the consequences of the American Revolutionary War and rise of abolitionism during the 1780s as pivotal to the fall of the planters. This article argues that those challenges did not determine the fate of the Jamaican planters. Rather, it was the radicalisation of the French and Haitian Revolutions, and the extended period of war that began in 1793, that led to their eventual defeat over the question of the slave trade.     

“A Straight Left against a Slogging Ruffian”: National Boxing Styles in the Years Preceding the First World War

The complicated shifts in power and status that took place between Britain, France and the United States in the years immediately preceding the First World War resulted in anxious self-examination and a series of identity crises whose social, cultural and political ramifications would be felt for decades to come. This was also a boom time for boxing, and one that was distinguished by a lively debate about the pros and cons of the “English” and “American” styles. This paper argues that these detailed deliberations about sporting technique often exposed a more general disquiet about national strengths and vulnerabilities and about the pre-war balance of power. A consideration of straight lefts and slogging ruffians tells us something about the issues at stake.     

Depleted suburban house sparrow <Emphasis Type="Italic">Passer domesticus</Emphasis> population not limited by food availability

Little is known about the environmental factors that limit the demography and abundance of wild vertebrates in highly modified urban environments. The House Sparrow Passer domesticus is a globally widespread species whose urban populations have recently undergone substantial declines particularly in Europe. The environmental drivers of these declines remain unknown. In a previous study we showed that invertebrate availability during the breeding season limited reproductive success but not population size in a suburban sparrow population. In this study we test experimentally whether year-round food availability limits demography and population size. Supplementary feeding involved the provision of invertebrate prey (during the breeding season) plus unlimited high-energy seed (year-round) at 33 sparrow colonies spread across suburban London over two successive calendar years. Thirty-three unfed colonies served as controls. Supplementary feeding increased fledgling abundance, but had no impact on overwinter survival or population size. We conclude that this depleted suburban sparrow population is not limited by food availability, and conservation efforts based primarily on food provision are unlikely to succeed. We also tested whether cross-colony variation in sparrow abundance was correlated with a set of potential environmental stressors including measures of predator abundance and pollution. Sparrows were more abundant, or showed more positive temporal changes in abundance, at localities containing large areas of seed-rich habitat and low levels of nitrogen dioxide air pollution. Further research is merited into the potential impacts of air pollution on the fitness of urban birds.     

A History and Analysis of Radical Activism in Sociology, 1967–1969, with Special Reference to the Sociology Liberation Movement,the Black Caucus,the Executive Council,the War in Vietnam and a Few Other Things*

Radical activism in sociology can be explained as reaction against developments in American society, university structure, social theory and the American Sociology Association. Beginning in 1967 with a controversy over a Vietnam resolution, it has grown to include organized opposition through the Sociology Liberation Movement and the separation of the Black Sociologists Association. The assumptions behind sociology as an academic field and an occupation, have been and are being tested and found erroneous by an increasing number of sociologists.     

From Resistance to Activis m: The Emergence and Persistence of Activism among American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada

The concept of ‘emergent ties’ is often used to refer to the role of social networks in activating social movements. Yet pre-existing network ties were usually not a factor in initiating decisions of 50,000 draft-age American youth to migrate to Canada during the American Vietnam War. These youth often learned about the possibility of migrating to Canada through the news media and a widely distributed draft resistance manual. Once in Canada, they often became involved in networks that directed and sustained their movement activity. This suggests that the emergence and persistence of activism may often be distinct. This paper argues that a transformation process that leads to activism is often a life stage specific process, usually in late adolescence or early adulthood, whose explanation requires detailed attention to everyday behavioral activity; while the evolution and persistence of activism is often a life course persistent process that covers a longer period and involves the influence of more generically structured network ties. These patterns are demonstrated in a fuzzy set analysis (FSA) of early and longer term political activism in the lives of Americans who migrated to Toronto during the Vietnam War. We find that for both men and women, helping others was a necessary experience in transforming the resistance involved in this migration into collectively organized anti-war activism, and that a longer term tendency of the women who migrated to Canada to remain more involved than men in social movements is a product of their continuing contacts with the persons involved in their earlier activism. The results of our research underline the importance of distinguishing life stage specific and life course persistent processes in the study of social movements, and more generally that the study of social movements and the life course have much to contribute to one another.     

Secularization, Differentiation, and the Function of Religious Value Orientations

The term "secularization," when its referent is social institutions and value-norm complexes, is viewed as an instance of differentiation. However, the process of differentiation has both structural and functional components. Confusion in the debate over the nature and extent of secularization in American society arises from the fact that there is disagreement over the functions of religion in a differentiated social setting. A typology of meanings of "secularization" is developed by focusing on this functional component of the differentiation process. This typology, combined with a specification of the various meanings of "religion," is utilized to pinpoint specific areas of disagreement in the debate over secularization. Suggestions are made on ways to empirically resolve the controversy.     

Shared spaces,shared structures: Latino social formation and African American English in the U.S. south

This study examines the appropriation of grammatical structures of African American English (AAE) by adolescent Latinos attending a multi‐ethnic middle school in North Carolina. The study couples quantitative variationist analysis of four ‘core’ grammatical features of AAE (invariant be, copula deletion, past‐tense copula leveling, and third‐person singular –s absence) with the findings of an ethnographic study of Latino adolescent identity in order to better understand the social processes leading to the incorporation of AAE grammar into English varieties spoken by Latinos. Results show that Latino students from across social formations make use of AAE grammatical features, but differ significantly from African American students in terms of sociolinguistic patterning. Ethnographic data shed light on linguistic data in three domains: (1) differences in use of AAE structures between male and female Latino/a students; (2) the prolific use of AAE by one gang‐affiliated student; and (3) the racial complexities within the ethnic category ‘Latino.’     

'War Is Not a Map': Irish America,Transnationalism, and Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Falls

Abstract

This essay argues for a transnational reading of Irish novelist Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Falls (2007). It contends that O'Connor's revisiting of the period of the American Civil War and its aftermath begs all sorts of questions regarding Ireland and Irish America's historical and contemporary transnational intercessions and responsibilities. As Ireland underwent a period of unparalleled economic prosperity beginning in the mid-1990s, which most commentators attribute to successive Irish governments' commitment to globalization, it began to face new and pressing challenges in relation to its involvement with the rest of the world, particularly with regard to its stance on neutrality and recent immigrants to Ireland. I conclude that Redemption Falls reveals the complexity of Irish and Irish Americans' relationship to notions of whiteness and (racial) innocence and challenges readers to consider how Ireland will conduct its future relations with the global community both within and beyond its borders.     

Social Survey Research1 in Japanese Sociology

Abstract: In this paper, we look at the history of social survey development in Japanese sociology. First, the history of social research in Japan before World War II is explored. Second, the introduction of survey research to Japan during the American occupation after World War II is examined, and third, the present state and roles of social survey research in Japanese sociology is discussed. Social research was introduced as an administrative tool for the government. Sociology and social research were developed under British empiricism and American pragmatism, but Japanese academia has been based on a metaphysical approach. Social research introduced as a practical tool long had difficulty in being accepted by Japanese academia. For this reason, most sociologists in universities did not use social survey research for practical purposes, but pursued qualitative methodologies for analyzing data to gain academic prestige even after Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) and Sabro Yasuda's research projects spread social survey methods in the field of Japanese sociology. Such academics did not think that findings acquired through qualitative case studies had to be confirmed through quantitative data to serve a practical purpose, nor did they believe that quantitative data could be better understood when examined along side qualitative data. Social survey methods have been opposed by those who have favored case‐study analysis methods in Japanese sociology. Needless to say, this opposition is fruitless. I propose that professional sociologists in Japanese universities should use social survey research for practical problems more frequently. This is the best way to establish sociology and social research as a science in Japanese society.     

What is Flint? Place,storytelling, and social media narrative reclamation during the Flint water crisis

ABSTRACT

The Flint Water Crisis became a national news story in January of 2016, when major publishers such as The New York Times began covering the story. In the same month, an influx of social media activism occurred in response to the crisis, with citizens developing hashtag campaigns such as #FlintFwd in order to disseminate news and stories from a citizen’s perspective; these campaigns often positioned Flint positively ? as a recovering community ? rather than a city in the middle of a public health crisis, and often addressed not a national public but a local audience. This paper considers Flint-based social media activity to investigate the emergence of place-based activism within the ostensibly global network of social media. In doing so, it identifies three key themes; 1) leveraging social media to forward a critique of deficient journalistic storytelling; 2) using the affective process of storytelling via social media to claim authority over their own material offline existence, and 3) using place-based storytelling to implicate others as witnesses via the global network of social media. These themes coalesce around a distinctly critical logic of connectivity. This logic extends the notion of connectivity articulated by Van Dijck and Poell [2013. Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14.] and the strategies of platform activism explored by Tufekci [2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.] to explain how social media works to expose discrepancies between the public story of the water crisis and material, lived conditions of Flint, rendering visible a discursive identity of Flint thus far unrecognized.     

What We Should Want with History: A Meditation on Cultural Studies,Methodology, and Politics

This essay evaluates two of the central problems for Cultural Studies as a field: how to generate methodologically rigorous scholarship that is also politically useful; and how to productively use models and theory in the practice of history. Beginning with conversations about the place of (disciplinary) history in Cultural Studies, this essay explores one of the legendary debates in the field: between E. P. Thompson, Perry Anderson, and (at least in theory) Louis Althusser. Though the debate centered on the degree to which the English Civil War could be termed a “bourgeois revolution,” Thompson's fundamental critique concerned Anderson's use of abstract models in history. However, the distinctions Thompson makes are not nearly as clear‐cut in practice – particularly when we look at Ellen Meiksins Wood's attempt to intervene on Thompson's side in her 1991 book The Pristine Culture of Capitlism. Wood's understanding of capitalism relies on an abstract conceptualization of that mode of produciton that is ironically similar to that of Althusser and Anderson. Arguing this as an illustratration of the importance of explicit models and methods, the essay develops Richard Johnson's account of Marx's use of abstraction and theory in his own historical scholarship. Marx's framework is then deployed to reconsider the English Civil War in realation to a key contemporary concern: the origins of copyright and intellectual property. It ends by advocating for what I term anarchic abstraction: a conscious, rigorous, politically‐committed, and dialectical attention to the order and determinations of history with no strict hierarchy given in advance.     

‘It just feels English rather than multicultural’: local interpretations of Englishness and non‐Englishness

Who, or what, is English? Drawing on qualitative interviews with white majority interviewees in three locations in England, this article explores local interpretations of English and Englishness. The article investigates the way members view their local environment as being ‘English’, and examines the criteria underpinning such interpretations. While various meanings are identified, it is found that Englishness is more often accomplished through talking about people and ethnicity rather than through the use of geography. That is, members defined the Englishness of place by referring explicitly to people. Rather than moving away from social categorical accounting, the category English was interpreted through the mobilisation of ‘non‐English’ others. In this rhetorical context, an English place is antithetical to a multiethnic place. Instead the term English is used to refer to white majority people. Although Englishness was defined in opposition to multiculture, this was not necessarily done in such a way as to exclude non‐English ‘others’. Above all, it reflects ambiguity amongst the white ethnic majority about how they can, and should, be named.     

Migration,Motherhood, Marriage: Cross‐Cultural Adaptation of North American Immigrant Mothers in Israel

This study probes the cross‐cultural adaptation patterns of North American women who immigrated to Israel with their Israeli‐born husbands (or married there) and are mothers in their new country. In order to undertake a cultural analysis of the interplay between immigration, motherhood and bicultural marriage, we examine: the effects of motherhood and North American culture of origin on cross‐cultural adaptation; the effects of immigration to Israel on motherhood and childrearing; the influence of family of origin on the immigrant motherhood experience; and the role of Israeli husbands and their families in the women’s cross‐cultural adaptation process. We study patterns for the entire group as well as bringing out individual differences. Our main finding is that motherhood serves as the principal social link to the Israeli host society. The high status of North American culture and English proficiency facilitate cross‐cultural adaptation in Israel. Our findings reveal transnationalist tendencies co‐existing with various adaptation strategies. We propose an expansion of previous acculturation models to accommodate this dual modus vivendi.     

The sociology of social problems in Japan

The sociology of social problems in Japan has different characteristics from its counterpart in the United States. These differences are the circumstances surrounding an individual’s knowledge of social science prior to World War II, and the two main streams of social science after the rush of American sociology into Japan following that war. A few legends in some of the main fields of study are reviewed. Additionally, one of the most urgent social problems facing sociologists in Japan, the decline and survival of departments of sociology, is described and discussed.     

Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation: Struggles against Enclosure in Okinawa

This article argues through an examination of an anti‐base struggle that erupted in early 1950 in Isahama, Okinawa that it is necessary to consider the ways that the so‐called new imperialism of the post‐World War II period required the transformation of social relations, even in places like Okinawa that are regarded as exceptional sites where US bases and facilities operate through the suspension of sovereignty. It asserts that a focus on the gendered dimensions of antagonisms that developed in Okinawa as the US built its military complexes there allows us to see how local communities, often led by women, fundamentally challenged the base‐related enclosures and pushed against the constant ideological work that the language of exception played in normalizing capitalist social relations in general. Finally, it claims that while Okinawa's case may not seem meaningful if taken in its singularity, if we keep in mind that the islands were just one locale within a global military empire that was comprised of hundreds of military complexes containing thousands of bases scattered throughout 64 countries at the height of the Cold War, the destabilizing force of struggles against enclosures as material and ideological sites through which capitalist social relations were naturalized should not be underestimated as valuable shapers of the post‐World War II American empire.     

Custom,Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea

This paper seeks to illustrate some of the distinctive national features of the relationship between custom, law, and ideology in Papua New Guinea. While the concept of ‘native custom’ was initially the creation of Australian colonial law, the relationship between custom and law acquired a new complexion around the time of national independence in 1975, and the political use of the Tok Pisin words kastom and lo, both then and since, reveals that their relationship is not like that of the two things commonly known as ‘custom’ and ‘law’ in the English language or the political discourse of a country like England or Australia. Instead, their relationship has to be understood through an exploration of the metaphorical use of the Tok Pisin word rot (‘road’), which seems to stand for something midway between a ‘cult’ and an ‘ideology’, and through an understanding of the way in which the social relations of large-scale resource development have transformed the post-colonial political landscape.     

Social identities, class identity and political perspectives

There has been considerable controversy over the extent to which class is a salient social identity, and the importance of other social identities Marshall and his colleagues (1988) argue that class identity remains a salient frame of reference in people's daily lives while Saunders (1989;1990) and Emmison and Western (1990) argue that class identity is not as strong as they claim, and the importance of other social identities cannot be denied. However, proponents and opponents in the debate are agreed that the salience of social identities depends upon the context in which they are found which cannot be fully explored in highly-structured interviews. Drawing on data from a ‘qualitative re-study’ of the Affluent Worker series, it will be argued that people have many different identities, including a strong class identity, which co-exist at the same time. That said, their class identity is the most important influence on the formation of political perspectives. This finding concurs with the Essex team and Saunders even though he has sought to distance himself from this conclusion.